Best Alternatives to Youtube for Small Businesses - 2021
Youtube's change in terms and conditions (effective today November 18, 2020) will allow ads to be run on your business videos, whether you want them there or not. For this reason, we think it's a good time to brush up on the best alternatives to Youtube for small businesses.
While this news did not go over well with members of the YouTube community, it may also be time for businesses to reconsider hosting their embedded videos on Youtube. Many small businesses use Youtube to host their videos (for free) so that they can be embedded on their business website. Typically, businesses that use Youtube this way have no interest in earning revenue from having ads appear on their videos and just need a way to embed video on their business website.
A Change in Youtube's Terms & Conditions...
...will allow ads to be run on your embedded business website videos, whether you want them there or not.
Best Case vs. Worst Case for Businesses that use Youtube for Embedding Video
Best Case
The best case for this change is that no ads will appear on your videos, and you have nothing to worry about.
Worst Case
The worst case is that ads for your competitor start appearing on your videos....on your own website.
More About the Youtube TOC Change
Starting November 18th, 2020, YouTube began running ads on some creators’ videos, whether or not they want ads. Additionally, under the new terms, Youtube does this without providing them with a portion of any ad revenue because they’re not big enough to be enrolled in its Partner Program.
The Youtube terms and conditions now read:
"YouTube's right to monetize: YouTube has the right to monetize all content on the platform and ads may appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program."
You may be asking yourself....
What can I use instead of Youtube?
Is there an alternative to YouTube without ads?
Here is a list of the best alternatives to Youtube for businesses:
- Vimeo
- Wistia
- Vidyard
- Sprout Video
- Wave.video
- Brightcove
- Cincopa
Comparison Chart of Youtube Alternatives for Businesses (With Website Video Embeds & No Ads)
| Youtube Alternative | Free Plan? | Free Plan Space | Lowest Paid Tier Price | Lowest Paid Tier Space | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yes... Vimeo Free Plan » | 500MB per week of upload space, up to 5GB total account storage | $7/month | 5GB/week 250GB every year | A good option for business website video embeds. |
| Yes | Unlimited uploads but only 5 embeds allowed. | $15/month | Unlimited uploads but only 20 embeds allowed | ... |
| Yes | 5 Free Video Embeds | $39/month | 20 Free Video Embeds | Customizable player, some video editing and royalty free clips allow you to create videos on this platform, not just host them. |
| Yes | 3 free videos | $99/month | 10 free videos or podcast episodes to embed anywhere | Better for businesses that need video marketing analytics. It's expensive if you just need to embed videos on your website. |
| NO | N/A | $24.99/month | 500G | Customizable player, marketing tools, etc. make this an option targeted to businesses investing in video marketing. If you just need video embeds, this is probably overkill. |
| NO | N/A | $25/month is the lowest plan that includes website embeds. | 40 Videos 2G Max File Size 100G Monthly Traffic | This platform has a lot of features and supports hosting of other types of media including podcasts. It could be useful to certain types of businesses. |
| NO | N/A | Pricing is not readily available on their website, so it's likely expensive/for enterprise use. | Videos: 50 or 200 Plays: up to 100,000; No Overages Users: 2 or 5 | Robust video marketing, hosting, streaming platform....overkill for most small businessess. |
Other Youtube Alternatives we looked at that don't work as well for embedding business videos:
- Dailymotion - Geared to content creators looking to monetize.
- Facebook - You can embed videos from Facebook on your website, but they come with all the FB baggage and may distract users by pulling them into Facebook.
- IGTV - Vertical video only which is likely not a good option for businesses.
- Dacast - This is more geared to those with livestreaming needs.
- Kaltura - Enterprise level complete video marketing suite that is overkill for most small business.
Who did we miss? What is your recommended alternative to Youtube?
If you use a different business video hosting/embedding solution on your website as an alternative to Youtube for small businesses, let us know in the comments.
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